[[quoteright:300:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/guy_peellaert_taxi_driver.jpg]] [[caption-width-right:300:[[{{Tagline}} On every street in every city, there's a nobody who dreams of being a somebody]].]]

One of Creator/MartinScorsese's most famous movies, made in 1976, it's the story of an insomniac and depressed New York City [[TheTaxi cab driver]] (Travis Bickle, played by Creator/RobertDeNiro) who becomes obsessed with [[TheScourgeOfGod cleansing the city of human "trash"]] and goes insane.

The film was written by Creator/PaulSchrader and was inspired by a CreatorBreakdown he'd experienced in the mid-70s and which he hoped to get out of by "exorcism through art" (his words). The project was originally going to be directed by Brian De Palma and languished for years until it attracted the attention of Scorsese and Creator/RobertDeNiro and is notable for being one of De Niro's first massive roles and for Creator/JodieFoster's breakout role, as a [[JailBait child prostitute]] (she was twelve years old at the time). Cybill Shepherd, Creator/HarveyKeitel, Creator/AlbertBrooks, and Peter Boyle also appear in the film, and Music/BernardHerrmann composed the music score (his last). Both De Niro and Foster received Oscar nominations.)

Made on a low-budget but with heart and passion, the film was shot extensively on location in New York in the 70s and remains the defining glimpse of TheBigRottenApple pre-Giuliani era of the city, its shots of Times Square's seedy porn district, the Alphabet City area where the movie ends and the fairly accurate chart of geography (rare for its time) made it a defining portrait of an American city. It won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for several Oscars and was a success in its time.

While controversial in its release, it became positively notorious when [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hinckley_Jr John Hinckley, Jr.]] cited it as the source of his obsession with star Jodie Foster and indirect influence on his failed assassination of President Reagan. Knowing this, makes several scenes, including where Bickle appears to be about to shoot Senator Palantine, [[HarsherInHindsight a different experience to watch]].

Not to be confused with ''Adventures of a Taxi Driver'', an AwfulBritishSexComedy that came out at about the same time.

----!!This film provides examples of:

* AccidentalHero: [[spoiler:Travis initially planned to assassinate a Politician. Had he done that he would have been a hated villain, but because he became VigilanteMan he's become a folk hero. There's no difference or change in his mentality and he could just as easily be one or the other.]]* {{Adorkable}}: In a kinder environment, Travis would definitely be this. In this universe, his failed attempts at flirting and shy nature just make watching him try to fit in deeply uncomfortable.* AffablyEvil: Sport may be a vulgar pimp making his living prostituting young girls but that doesn't mean that he doesn't [[PetTheDog show a bit of affection]] or [[EvenEvilHasStandards have standards]]. Shown the clearest when he gives Travis a series of vile descriptions about the things Iris could do for the pay, but tells him "no rough stuff". As well as the dance scene...well, being played by Harvey Keitel, known for strongly moral characters, didn't help.* TheAlcoholic: Travis has shades of this if the flask he's seen taking a swig from before meeting Andy is any indication.* AnimalMotifs: Creator/RobertDeNiro thought of Travis Bickle as a crab - indirect and tended to shift from side to side.* AntiHero: Travis Bickle practically ''invented'' the modern anti-hero. Travis is a UnscrupulousHero. The guy's a nut, but hardly a malicious one..* AntiVillain: Travis is a [[WellIntentionedExtremist Type III]].* AssholeVictim: We're not supposed to cheer the carnage but Travis' victims (Robbers and pimps) do fall under this category.* AuthorAvatar: Travis for Paul Schrader, though Schrader obviously never went on a shooting spree (that we know of anyway).* AwesomeButImpractical: Using a .44 Magnum for self-defense, [[LampshadedTrope lampshaded by Easy Andy]] who recommends a [[BoringButPractical snubnose .38]] instead. [[spoiler:True to Andy's warnings it proves to be pretty useless in the climax. Travis only gets off one shot and a non-fatal one at that. His other guns prove to be much more practical.]]* AxCrazy: ** The vile passenger played by Creator/MartinScorsese. He even claims to be one. "You must think I'm pretty sick, right?" (and laughs).** Travis somewhat, by the end of the movie (of course to a much lesser extent than the above example).* BaldOfAwesome: Travis is perhaps the only man in cinematic history to pull off a mohawk.* BasementDweller: Of the gun-idolizing, hero-complexing variety.* BeardOfEvil: Martin Scorsese in his cameo as the passenger.* BewareTheQuietOnes: You'd better not provoke him.* BigAppleSauce: A fictional -- dark and rotten -- version of UsefulNotes/NewYorkCity. Supposedly somewhat of a TruthInTelevision, at least at the time.* BigDamnHeroes: Travis fantasizes about being one for months leading up to his eventual rampage. It's one reason [[spoiler:people think the ending is entirely in his imagination as he's dying (though WordOfGod says no).]]* TheBigRottenApple:** Travis, as a night cab driver sees the worst side of New York. "All the animals come out at night - whores, skunk pussies, buggers, queens, fairies, dopers, junkies, sick, venal. Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets."** The real mid-1970s New York wasn't much better than Travis saw it. An interpretation is that this is an EnforcedTrope with Travis having JadeColoredGlasses, being a racist and a homophobe, and disliking the city's poverty. And its relation to his opposition against its racial and sexual diversity as noted by both Scorsese and Schrader is that he is actually drawn to the city's lower depths because [[YouAreWhatYouHate he secretly wants to be part of it]]. * BlackBlood: [[MoralGuardians In order to attain an R rating]], Scorsese had to desaturate the shootout scene, making the blood a dull pink rather than bright red. (General consensus is that the muted colors work in the scene's favor.)%%* BookEnds* BoomHeadshot: A certain [[DirtyCop sleazy Detective]] gets one of these.* BoringButPractical: The .38 snubnose revolver that Easy Andy sells to Travis as opposed to the [[HandCannon .44 Magnum]] who he notes is too big for concealment and everyday use.* ByronicHero: A mild case in Travis.* CallBack: [[spoiler: Travis runs out of bullets in the final scene, because one of his weapons was previously used to stop a robbery.]]* CharacterDevelopment: Zig-zagged. Travis becomes more unhinged and menacing as the movie progresses before finally snapping. In the final scene [[spoiler:he is more sociable it seems his mission benefited him. But the last shot of the movie (and WordOfGod) suggest that Travis hasn't developed at all. He isn't cured of his disorder and he will likely snap again.]]* ChekhovsGun: Travis uses every single weapon he buys.* ChronicHeroSyndrome: Travis has a ''major'' (read: delusional) case of this.* CityNoir: Most examples of CityNoir in film draw inspiration from this one.* CombatPragmatist: Travis. For all the guns he buys, he runs out of ammo while his most indefatigable opponent, the Old Man, is wrestling with him. [[spoiler:He grabs the Detective's gun and uses that.]]* CoolShades: Travis' famous Aviator Ray ban's.* CountryMouse: Travis, being from the Midwest is an outsider in the big city and his view of New York is pretty much the rest of the country's view of the city at the time.* CrapsackWorld: This is the worst New York has looked outside of apocalyptic science fiction. [[TruthInTelevision Truth In Movie]] as the city was in a genuinely bad state at the time of shooting, due to the decline in traditional industries and the fact that Wall Street hadn't yet clawed its way back to being a major financial centre.* CrazyPrepared: Travis spends much of the movie becoming this -- a big part of the film's dramatic interest has to do with what he's actually doing it for. He works out intensively, and buys four guns: a .38 revolver, a .44 Magnum, a .25 automatic and a .380 Walther PPK, more than he can possibly carry in his hands. He then builds an arm-mounted slide to conceal the .25 up his sleeve so it can be delivered right into his hand, and also tapes a knife to his boot. [[spoiler:It all pays off in the final shootout; he shoots Sport with the .38, blows half the Old Man's hand off with the .44 Magnum but is then shot in the neck by Sport. Travis takes Sport down with the .38 in his other hand, dropping the Magnum. Holding his left hand over his neck wound, he finishes Sport off with the .38 and also wounds the Old Man with it, and goes upstairs, the Old Man pursuing him. The Detective, who's been in the room with Iris the whole time, comes out and shoots Travis in the arm, making him drop the .38. Travis sinks to the floor, slides the .25 into his hand and shoots the Detective with it, several times. He then goes into the room and the Old Man jumps on him, but Travis uses his boot-mounted knife to skewer the Old Man's other hand, and then borrows the Detective's gun to blow the Old Man's brains out.]]* CreatorCameo: Scorsese plays a passenger who watches his wife through a window from the street while detailing how he'd like to shoot her. He also appears in the slow-motion introduction shot of Betsy in the background, sitting on a stoop. Whether or not this is the same character is unclear, but they are dressed differently.* CreepyMonotone: Travis.* DarkAndTroubledPast: Averted. We learn almost nothing of Travis' past and, based on the anniversary card, he keeps in contact with his parents and cares about their opinion to lie to them about his life. It makes the film more interesting as you really wonder what happened to Travis to make him the way he is. (See Vietnam below)* DeathSeeker: Travis, by the end. Indeed, [[spoiler:after shooting his final victim, he takes a gun and points it under his chin but it fails to fire, and he tries the other guns and fails, having run out of bullets]].* {{Deconstruction}}:** Of the {{Vigilante Man}}. Technically, on his first [[spoiler:and only]] outing as a vigilante, he [[spoiler:may or may not have died (though WordOfGod says no)]]. This is what happens when an ordinary man takes up arms and goes against (multiple) common thugs. And a physically fit ordinary man who supposedly had military training at that.** The main point is that [[spoiler:he initially wanted to assassinate Senator Palantine but couldn't because the Secret Service caught him out. Had he succeeded in that, he would have been a villain. There's no real difference between either action, only in choice of victims that makes one action more palatable than the other. Rich, smarmy politician versus evil child-sex trafficking pimps.]]** Screenwriter Paul Schrader noted the film was meant as an American exploration of the existentialist hero in European literature, showing that in a tougher, harder and less intellectual landscape, a character DesperatelyLookingForAPurposeInLife would struggle to eloquently express his inner turmoil, and eventually try and solve his petty and prosaic issues by seeking outlet in fame and respect rather than the "authenticity" described by Continental writers. * DelusionsOfEloquence: Travis Bickle constantly suffers from this. He has a strong inner life but lacks the education and cultural background to give voice to it, and instead uses whatever phrases around him to suit his purpose, often coming across as a "square" (as Iris notes) or as a mix of a "prophet" and "pusher" (as Betsy notes). ** A key example is the lunch between Travis and Betsy where Travis says, "I gotta get Organi-sized" which Betsy sees as a sappy office joke but Travis takes it as serious wisdom, and in a BrickJoke, eventually puts that poster in his apartment. His general overall seriousness and total lack of a sense of humor and his SarcasmFailure (in his conversations with Iris, Sport, Wizard and Betsy) are also a key part of his general social failure and his eventual breakdown.** The conversation between him and Wizard is the ultimate example where Wizard more or less provides existentialist ideas as the word on the street picked it up in the 70s, and Travis more or less sees that as bull-shit and Wizard shrugs and admits he isn't Bertrand Russell and tells him YouNeedToGetLaid.* DiscretionShot: Travis's awkward phone call to Betsy, where the camera pans away from him to look down an empty hallway as though feeling his embarrassment, is an unusual example.* DontTellMama: Travis lies to his parents about what is really going on with him to reassure them.* TheDulcineaEffect:** Bickle is a weird AntiHero version. Taking pity on a random prostitute who was in his cab for a little over ''30 seconds''.** An interpretation is that he is in fact [[spoiler:attracted to Iris, but is too ashamed to admit it, even to himself.]]* DyingDream: A common theory about the ending, since [[spoiler:Travis is let off for brutally murdering multiple people in front of a 12-year old girl, reunites said 12-year-old girl with her parents, gets his brief girlfriend back, and ''keeps his job with the cab company''.]] WordOfGod says no, however.* EmbarrassingFirstName: Iris hates her first name and prefers to be called "Easy." Travis insists upon calling her by her proper name.* EveryoneHasStandards: Travis looks pretty weirded out by the rantings of the sadist-husband client (Scorsese).* ExhaustedEyeBags: Travis develops these as he goes months with little or no sleep, leading Iris to assume he's a junkie and call him a hypocrite for criticizing Sport's habit.* FakeShemp: Creator/JodieFoster was doubled in the more explicit shots by her elder sister.* FilmNoir: Down to Travis narrating as if he pictures himself as a "hardboiled" noir hero.* FingerGun: Done a few times by Travis in the seedy porn theatres. Also, [[spoiler:after his rampage, Travis tries to shoot himself, but he's out of ammunition. When the police arrives, he places his index finger against his temple like a gun and pretends to shoot himself in the head several times.]]* {{Fingore}}: Travis's only shot with the .44 Magnum during the final shootout blows off three of one guy's fingers.* FiringOneHanded: Travis Bickle would die before holding a gun in both hands.* FourIsDeath: Travis buys four guns from Easy Andy. He also kills a total of four people over the course of the movie (first the burglar at a convenience store, then the three thugs near the end of the movie).%%* GainaxEnding* GunsAkimbo: Parodied in one shot where Travis draws his .44 Magnum in his right hand and his snubnose revolver in his left. The barrel of the former is longer than the entirety of the latter.* HandCannon: The .44 Magnum. The smaller guns turn out to be more useful, however.* HarpoDoesSomethingFunny: Famously, the "You talkin' to me?" scene was only scripted as Travis looking at himself in the mirror and perhaps talking to himself; it was De Niro's idea to have invoked the famous line.%%* HiddenWeapons: See more specific trope NothingUpMySleeve.* HollywoodPersonalityDisorders: This movie is often used to show the schizotypal one.* IconicItem: Travis' army jacket and of course the .44 Magnum.* IJustWantToBeSpecial: Travis desperately wishes he was someone of importance and could be a part of the world Betsy inhabits. It's his wish to escape his existence that leads him to go on his rampage. Best summed up by the movie's tagline on the top of the page.* ImportantHaircut: Travis has two. For most of the film, he has relatively short hair for the 1970s, slightly untidy but in no way hip. Around about the scene where he starts stalking Palantine, he has it cut shorter to something like a military crew-cut. When he's finally ready to go on the rampage, he gets the famous mohawk. After the final showdown and his convalescence we see him return to his first hair-style. * TheInsomniac: Travis. He becomes a night taxi driver because he can't sleep at night.%%* JobTitle* {{Joisey}}: Travis gives a fake name and address in New Jersey to a Secret Service agent after being promised "forms" to join the Secret Service.* KickTheSonOfABitch: With shades of DisproportionateRetribution. A {{Jerkass}} store clerk fed up of being robbed viciously beats a thief with a crowbar after Travis has killed him.* ListingTheFormsOfDegenerates: Travis Bickle does this a lot during the movie, but the example most famous is:-->"All the animals come out at night — whores, skunk pussies, buggers, queens, fairies, dopers, junkies, sick, venal. Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets."* LonersAreFreaks: Travis just can't get a grip on relating to people. So he turns himself into a walking arsenal and decides to do some damage/good.* LoonyFan:** Travis claims to be a fan of Senator Palantine. [[spoiler:The very same Senator Palantine he attempted to kill]]. ** In RealLife, the ''very'' loony John Hinckley Jr. was inspired by this film to attempt to assassinate UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan, as detailed above.* MadonnaWhoreComplex:** The film is a drastic {{Deconstruction}} of this kind of mentality. Travis puts Betsy on a pedestal and feels she's above him, so he tries to bring her down to his level, [[spoiler:by taking her to a porn theatre on a first date]].** Likewise with Iris, [[spoiler:he wants to be her savior and redeemer and rescue her.]]* MoralDissonance: Thanks for shooting up that den of prostitutes, you heroic rogue. Screenwriter Schrader said on DVD commentary that the fact that Bickle was worshipped as a hero was meant to be ironic, and that he would ''not'' be a hero when he snapped again (the cymbal crash and the look in his eyes in the rearview mirror at the end implied that he was as unstable as ever.).* MurderSuicide: [[spoiler:Travis was planning that, but he didn't have any bullets left]].* NoCelebritiesWereHarmed:** Travis, while mostly an Avatar for Paul Schrader, has more than a few similarities with Arthur Bremer who shot and paralyzed Governor George Wallace three years earlier. ** Creator/OliverStone, meanwhile, claims the film to be based on his life after returning from Vietnam and driving a cab in New York. * NoOneCouldSurviveThat: Subverted at the film's climax. [[spoiler:Travis shoots Iris's pimp once in the stomach, and assumes that he's dead (as do, in all likelihood, the audience). Minutes later, the pimp reappears behind Travis and shoots him, failing to kill Travis but wounding him quite badly]].* NoPartyGiven: Senator Palantine, although his comments suggest that he is a Democrat.* NoSocialSkills: Everyone Travis interacts with seems to sense that there's something off about him.* NothingUpMySleeve: One of Travis's guns is hidden up his sleeve, and drawn using a speed-rig he made himself.* OohMeAccentsSlipping: Robert De Niro worked hard on Travis' midwestern accent, but his real accent can be heard on occasion.* PlatonicProstitution: Travis does this to convince Iris to give it up. She is resistant to the idea.* PoliticallyIncorrectHero: Travis is commonly interpreted as being a racist, although the closest he comes to verbalizing it is referring to black people as "spooks." * PragmaticVillainy: Sport tells Travis all the degrading things he can do to Iris, but tells him not to do "the rough stuff" so he won't degrade her value. * PrettyLittleHeadshots: Averted in the final shootout.* PunctuatedForEmphasis: "They... can not... touch...... her..."* QuickNip:** Travis takes one right around when he purchases his guns.** Another shows up right before the [[spoiler:first, failed manifestation]] of his rampage.* ShellshockedVeteran: Travis, possibly.* ShoutOut:** Travis wanting to rescue Iris was regarded by Schrader and Scorsese to be ''Film/TheSearchers'' [[RecycledInSpace in 1970s New York City.]] They also gave "Sport" some Indian feathers on his hat to further link the two films.** The famous statement about "God's Lonely Man" is a citation of the essay of the same name by author Thomas Wolfe.** Travis Bickle is named after Mick Travis, Creator/MalcolmMcDowell's character in Lindsay Anderson's films ''Film/{{If}}'' and ''O Lucky Man'' (and later ''Britannia Hospital''). Also, in one scene in ''O Lucky Man'', [=McDowell=] wears suspenders with no shirt, as [=DeNiro=] does in one scene here.** During her coffee-shop date with Travis, Betsy quotes from Kris Kristofferson's song "The Pilgrim, Chapter 33", and Travis later buys her the album on which it appears (''The Silver Tongued Devil and I'').** Movie billboards are seen for ''[[Creator/ClintEastwood The Eiger Sanction]]'', ''Film/DrNo'', and possibly ''Film/TheWindAndTheLion'' (The billboard advertised Creator/SeanConnery).** Looking closely at one of the newspaper clippings at end of the film mentions Harry Kilmer as President of the Manhattan Cab Company. Harry Kilmer was the name of Robert Mitchum's private detective character in ''TheYakuza'', which was writer Paul Schrader's first screenplay.** While it would be dumb to suggest that the .44 Magnum's inclusion is in itself a reference to ''Film/DirtyHarry'', the reason the gun is so popular and thus is included in the film is [[TheRedStapler due to that movie]].[[note]]** Easy Andy (the gun salesman) mentions that someone would have to be a jackass to carry a Model 29 with an 8 3/4 inch barrel in the street, making it something of a TakeThat since Harry's Model 29 has an 8 3/4 inch barrel (though it changes to a 6 1/2 inch barrel in some scenes). The sequels have him carry a 6 1/2 inch version, however.[[/note]]** Travis also buys a [[Film/JamesBond Walther PPK]] (knockoff), although he's forced to surrender it. ** In the scene where Betsy leaves her office in slow-motion and Martin Scorsese can be glimpsed sitting on the stoop behind her, he's wearing an inside-out Columbia Studios t-shirt. ''Taxi Driver'' was a Columbia picture.** The shot of Travis putting a tablet into a glass of water and the overhead angle watching it slowly dissolve is an allusion to a famous scene in Creator/JeanLucGodard's ''Two or Three Things I Know About Her''. Likewise the opening sequence of Travis driving with his eyes reflected in the rear-view mirror is a ShoutOut to Creator/NicholasRay's ''Film/InALonelyPlace''.* SirSwearsALot: Travis is a milder example.* SlasherSmile: Travis briefly flashes one during the attempted assassination of Palantine.* SoundtrackDissonance: Rough city, smooth jazz.* SuicideByCop: [[spoiler:Travis seemingly attempts this at the film's climax. When the cops burst in, he puts his hands in his pocket and appears to be about to withdraw a gun. The cops aren't trigger happy enough for this to work however, and Travis instead pulls out an imaginary gun and pretends to shoot himself in the head]].%%* TheTaxi* TranquilFury: A lot of repressed passion beneath that quiet, cold surface.%% This used to be a "lolicon" wick.* TroublingUnchildlikeBehaviour: Jodie Foster as a 12-year-old underage prostitute.* UnbuiltTrope: The final shootout looks like a deconstruction of every action film shootout ever made: There are no flashy edits or jump cuts, no musical cues, no improbably cool weapons or marksmanship and it barely lasts two minutes. There is nothing, but raw violence and yet, it was made long before many films that used all those techniques.* UnreliableNarrator: The way Travis describes his life is, let's say, somewhat at odds to what we see of his life, especially how he describes it to other people; his diary, on the other hand, is pretty accurate.** Practically everything Travis says or narrates cannot be taken at face value. For example, midway through the film Travis says that 'There will be no more pills, no more bad food, no more destroyers of my body', and yet later in the film we see him eating mayonnaise out of the jar, we see him take pills and then we see him not only drink, but gargle beer. * TheVietnamVet: Bickle is strongly implied to be a Vietnam vet and claims to have served in the US Marines some time before the film begins. ** His green jacket with "Bickle, T." emblazoned on the back would certainly back up that claim, as would the charred North Vietnam Army flag in his apartment.** The PTSD also backs up this claim; many war vets come back with major trauma.** Travis is also proficient in the use of guns and combat knives and in hand-to-hand combat, although that doesn't necessarily make him a war vet.** Confirmed InUniverse. One of the news articles at the ending of the movie states that Travis was apart of a Special forces unit while in service.* VigilanteMan: Travis.* WannabeSecretAgent: Near the end of the movie, Travis Bickle lies about being on "secret government business" that he implies is in this vein. * YouAreWhatYouHate: Screenwriter Paul Schrader and director Scorsese's interpretation is that Travis, for all his hatred of New York's low-life environment, actually likes it and wants to be a part of it but is too full of self-hatred to actually let go. Specifically he hates child-trafficking pimps while he himself fights his attraction to Iris, strongly disapproving when [[spoiler:she tries to initiate oral sex on him]].* YouTalkinToMe: TropeNamer and TropeMaker, leading people to WatchItForTheMeme.----